Spelling Tests for 5 year olds

[MyOneandYoni]

Not really happy that a weekly spelling test has just been introduced in Year 1. Many children only recently just turned 5.
Apart from anecdotal evidence, does anyone have any research based evidence that spelling tests so young are a good idea or not?

DD has been doing spellings since the start of reception, I'm not convinced there's any point though, she never remembers any of them a week later anyway.

Total nightmare today. The thought of attempting spellings (such as "lightning", not c-a-t) has made my barely 5 year old tell me he hates school and he has cried himself to sleep...

We do them at my school rather against our better judgment, but because the parents want them. Having said that, they are only given between 6 and 8 words and they are always linked to that week's phonics sounds. "Lightning" sounds really hard for a 5 year old

child abuse wtaf?
It's a simple case of the abused becoming the abusers, generation after generation.
U were brainwashed into believing that the 2000+ English words with really stupid spellings e.g. (leave, sleeve, believe...speak, speech... blue, shoe, flew, through..) are somehow 'right'. U and your children's teachers are now doing the same to your children. And so this madness gets passed on from generation to generation, like many other forms of abuse.

Lots of children have a really lousy start to their education because adult speakers of English worldwide cannot get their act together and tidy up the English spelling mess. It really does not have to stay like that. The English spelling mess was not given, but created by stupid, selfish, angry or pompous people.

But it won't change in a hurry, because once u become used to a system, it's hard to see anything wrong with it.

But looked at objectively, the likes of
go - do, bed - said - paid, the - we, here - there, home - come....,
and hundreds more inconsistencies like that, are simply insane and make learning to read and write much harder than need be.

Okaaaaay

Yup - ok. Asking for thread to be deleted now.

MyOneandYoni

lightning? - Oct Year 1?

Just stepping back from whether learning spelling patterns whilst learning to read is useful or not (or even worse as some have suggested) -

I think you need to talk to other parents at the school about this.

This is what St. Ambrose primary offers for Y1 spellings: www.saintambrosebarlow.co.uk/for-children/year-1 - click spell and go to that week's spelling game. It his animated pictorial clues & is working simple short vowel sounds.

I think that there may well be an agenda here. Our school did something similar - progressively making spelling tests harder and more of a miserable experience for the children over about a month to finally get 'the single complaint' which allowed them to write to all parents and say 'Due to parental complaint, St. Mediocre will no longer be teaching spelling'.

I'm not here to debate the whys and wherefores of learning spelling - I think English which heavily borrows from many languages is complicated - trying to explain why it's eight/ weight with a long 'A' sound but height with a long 'I' when your 8 year old is asking why is a minefield. You just want to say 'because it is that way....' - but I'm sure there's a story behind it - as there is with any word in the English language.

So - I think as parents you need to determine

1. do you support learning spellings

2. do you want more age appropriate spelling lists. (your example lightning appears on the government's advice on spelling on the Year 5/6 spelling list here: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239784/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf

Why is a Year 1 teacher using a year 5/6 spelling word according to the government? There can be all sorts of reasons - but I'd look through the list of words you've been given - check out TES and this government list (link above) - and if everything is consistently well above Year 1 standard spellings - there is a problem there.

This may be about a school and it's culture - more than about whether children should learn how to spell cat (so understanding it's spelled with a c and not a k) as well as read it. And I totally take the point that some kids just memorize it/ some kids can see it written so often they just know it/ and other kids have to really learn when to use a 'k' and when to use a 'c' and find the whole thing really tricky.

HTH

I apologise for getting a bit carried away, although i stand by what i said.

The main point i want to make is that many English spellings are highly unpredictable and illogical. This means that there is no simple way of teaching or learning them. Teaching patterns is fine, if not many words disobey them, such 'a fat cat and rat sat' or 'stop not on hot spot'. But sounds have no real spelling pattern (air, care, there, their, bear...).

Different children need different approaches. Some learn them with relative ease, others have huge problems for years on end.

Advice to teachers changes according to which groups of experts manage to get the attention of government ministers. All governments have been using education as a political football for the past few decades, despite knowing very little about it.

U would not be getting different approaches, or so much chopping and changing in government guidance, if English spelling was more logical and easier to teach.

Spelling ability is not next to godliness. If your child is having a hard time getting there, be kind rather than pushy. The weakest spellers often work much harder at it than the better ones who happen to be born with a better aptitude for it.

Over and out.

I've also read in various places that spelling tests do little to help children learn to spell. children consistently get words right in their spelling tests and then immediately spell them wrongly in their independent writing

I suspect that this happens in later years when teachers are attempting to get children to correct spellings which they have habitually spelled wrong for a year or so (or more...). Of course, once children are in full flow with what they are writing correct spelling is the last thing on their mind and they use the spelling that has become habitual (and automatic).

On the other hand, if children are given little tests to reinforce what they have just been learning they don't get a chance to develop habitual 'wrong' spelling.

Not that I think spelling tests for 5 y olds are a particularly good idea. They surely must be practising and reinforcing the code they are learning in other ways in regular class lessons.

I don't believe in homework at primary...

'No less barbaric than the caning which was regularly used in the past'

I am guessing you have never been caned?.

If spelling lists were relevant to the phonic sounds learned at school and/or the current topic then it wouldnt be so bad. My children have had lists where they couldnt even read all the words which is surely proof that tgey are too hard?Personally Id prefer them to be tested on the meanings of new words rather than be tested on the spelling then never use that word again.

I am guessing they were learning the 'igh' pattern and I bet light was another word on the list.it doesn't take a genius to go from ' Light' to 'lightning' now does it?

moaningminnie2 - I take your point - that as part of 'igh' pattern words on spelling lists - learning lightning can be seen as an extension of light (although its etymological derivation is from lighten not light: deriving from Middle English lightenen www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lightning - whereas light derives from old english loeht a totally different word: www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=light&searchmode=none).

And yes if in Year R at OneAndYoni's DC's school - right away they started first phases of phoneme teaching (see for example this school's approach: www.draytoninfantschool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Phonics-how-we-teach-it.pdf - then -igh words (considered Phase 3 at Drayton infant school) would come early in Year 1

But ....

as a parent, presented with a list of words with no explanation of what phonemes are being taught that week in class - and possibly no clear understanding of what phonemes are being reinforced through spelling (and my DDs attended a school where joining up spelling with class phoneme work was not done) - can I just say that MyOneandYoni & her 5 year old may be quite justified in thinking that being asked to spell lightning is a little tricky for a 5 year old.

Again if the government advises 'lightning' appears on spelling lists for years 5/6 (ages 9 - 11) - it does rather beg the question what is it doing there on a Y1 spelling list. Government advice is words like: high, night, light, bright, right (www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239784/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf see page 5)

Now maybe the teacher just googled a list of 'igh' words and there was a word that children would know that avoided other kettles of fish like the silent 'k' in knight and may have been included as part of the -ight group of words.

One of the 'odd' things about spelling lists is there seems to be a tyranny about the number 10. 10 spellings a week - because 7 would look wrong or odd I guess.

But - if teachers are truly educational professionals - than sending home a spelling list which upsets children/ families & doesn't make a lot of sense doesn't exactly strike me as highly professional behaviour. But it's happening - not just to me or OneAndYoni - but to lots of people.

I don't mind spelling lists - but like enderwoman suggests - it's the meaning of the word that's as important as the spelling. I also feel strongly that spelling comes easier to some than others as my own DDs have shown me in technicolour.

I think as adults we forget sometimes that it's easy if you know how to do it - but from the other side of that proverbial fence - working out how to spell these words (and why they're spelled/ pronounced like this or that) isn't always obvious.

Ime it seems too early and pointless. My dd2 could not write or read in yR and beginning of y1. The school gave my dd a sen statement but did not give her any support. At home I had to encourage her to write whatever and however she wants to get her to just feel comfortable about the act of holding a pencil to write. I never work on her spelling at all. By yr3 my dd has been well ahead in writing and spelling although not so much with reading comprehension. May be it is similar to the argument about whether children should learn multiplication table. Perhaps if a child enjoys writing then his/er spelling will just come a long. If a child enjoys certain maths type games then his/er timestable would just come a long.

I believe we should encourage young children to write creatively in their own terms thus help them develop a passion or at least confidence in writing. If they enjoy writing their spelling will come along unless the child truly has some form sn.

My dd couldn't write more than two letters at a time at age 5. By age 7 her spelling was 11. It was all down to her enjoyment and confidence in writing.

Yup - enjoyment and confidence. I agree.
To be fair to the school, they have listened to our concerns and I hold the Govian statutory requirements to blame rather than the individual (v sweet) class teacher.
I hate what is happening to education in this country.

As I stated earlier, children this age aren't even in in formal education in other countries (who still manage to produce doctors, lawyers, scientists, creatives) etc., let alone being made to feel failures like they are with this method.

I feel in this country we have far too many tests far too young. We use the results of all these tests to keep on telling our children the are never good enough. I am very disappointed about our early education in this country. I thought children should use these valuable years to develop their enjoyment of learning. However we seem to spend all these years to check and report what wrongs are with them.

vkyyu:

I see your point of view regarding exams - but I've always taken the view that testing (phonics screening in Y1/ end KS1 SATs end Y2) - isn't just about telling a child they're dim and frankly I don't think most children really absorb they're even being 'tested' in Y1/ Y2. I've always seen this as an opportunity as a parent to understand how my child is progressing against national standards.

I've personally never seen DD1 doing poorly on an exam as just her failure - it was also mine as her parent and the schools. And it is a very poor school indeed who doesn't see a child failing to perform at NC2 level at end KS1 SATs as a failure.

The test is how a school handles poor results vis a vis the pupil & the parents. St. Mediocre chose to say to us that we 'just needed to understand our DD1 was a bit dim'. Apparently there was no point them trying with her.

I take the view that no child is automatically bright or dim - every child has strengths & weakness and individual ways of learning. Once we worked out that the issue was DD1 is an extremely visual learner & was the type of kid that needed to go away and do it herself (sometimes quite a few times) we were able to rectify a lot of the problem at home (things like Maths Factor totally turning around poor progress in maths).

So vkyyu I'd put it to you that as the parent it's up to you to interpret testing results:

You can send the message - I don't put a lot of store in this

You can send the message - Oh dear, that's a bit disappointing, perhaps it wasn't your day/ whilst also talking to the school about what you can do to help improve your DC's progress

you can send the message that 'effort' is as important to you as results

Getting a bad result doesn't necessarily mean your child is a failure - that's it, pack up the shop. Getting a bad result can be that chance to recognise there's a problem and start to work hard to get the help your child needs right now ....

HTH